All About Adolescence

This week, a longread of mine about gender-affirming care for trans children was published at Grid News. The article looks at this care through a few lenses: medicine, mental health, politics, and the international landscape. My piece is grounded in science that is reinforced by clinical expertise and the stories of families under siege in Texas for caring for their children and affirming their gender identity.

One thing that stood out to me as I was reporting this story was how much “gender affirmation” reflects the “yes…and” approach that we should take with children when they tell us who they are.

When a child tells their parents that they are nonbinary or trans — whatever language they use to express it — a hugely important thing parents can do for that child’s mental health and well-being is to say, “Yes, and we respect that. What we can we do to support you?” Parents of children who express being cis and heterosexual seem to universally offer this affirmation unasked. Yet for other children, many parents do not respond this way and instead reply with a reflexive, “no, but,” or simply, “no.” This kind of response harms children in profound ways.

Parents respond with “no, but” and “no” in lots of other situations, too, from “I don’t like broccoli” to “this shirt scratches me.” Imagine you, a whole human, feeling this way about broccoli or itchy clothes and being told, “No, eat the broccoli” or “No, wear the shirt” by someone larger than you, someone whom you trusted to see and understand you.

Can you remember being a child? How far back do your memories go? One category of recall is “episodic” memories, the recollections that we can set in a specific time and place, with illustrative detail.

Dating these memories is easy for those of us who have younger siblings or lived in a lot of different places in our childhood. Instead of our early lives being a blur of sameness of surroundings and the people around us, we can pin them to locations and the changing cast of characters in our lives. Because of this, I can place my earliest clear memories to the early 1970s, before the birth of my next-younger sibling.

Based on the clothes I was wearing (pajamas, with a coat over them), the activity I recall (building a snowman, quite unusual for being in Texas), and where we lived (Waco), I was probably about age 3 or 4. Before that, I have fuzzier recall, mostly related to the layout of homes I lived in, a bathtub full of bubbles, a huge swollen face from poison ivy exposure, a puppy, the color of wood on a porch.

I bet that in reading this, you didn’t feel much inclination to tell me that my memories were inaccurate, or my recall faulty. Why would you? They’re my experiences and mine to recollect.

But what if I told you that also that during my pre-K years, I also knew that I liked boys — I recall especially one boy in pre-K named Freddie. I had a huge crush on Freddie (I don’t think he reciprocated). Many people would accept this as fine, because it fits their priors. A little girl knows she likes boys. Big whoop.

Yet I also knew quite early on that I was not a “normal girl.” I didn’t want to do what the other girls did, I didn’t have the same interests. For the first 17 years of my life, if I hadn’t been aware of that difference myself, some of the other children around me — including at a boarding school my freshman year of high school — made it abundantly clear.

I now know that, as I once tweeted, I feel like I live in two spaces. One is the space outside my head where I’ve been treated as a girl and then a woman, and all that this perception entails. The other is the one inside my head where I am just…being my brain, without any gendered valence.

I just feel kind of neutral, or if anything, certainly leaning more toward what everyone during my childhood viewed as “masculine” pursuits and interests. Today, I believe that would be called “nonbinary,” but in the 1970s and 1980s, I was just viewed (and felt) like I constantly had to interpret two worlds, neither of which I was especially fluid at understanding.

All of which is to say, we know who we are, and we know it early on. We recognize it in ourselves, and we also have this recognition imposed on us because the people around us see it, too. How they react can be formative, deformative, damaging, or uplifting.

When a child tells you who they are, believe them. People change, sure. Are you exactly the same person you were when you were 5? Probably not. But what you were at 5, no matter who you are, was a person who needed love, acceptance, and affirmation of themselves as an individual, then, at that time and place.

If a child discloses something personal they feel or see in themselves, accept what they’re saying with a “yes, and” and go from there. That’s affirmative parenting. And it gives them something that children badly need from their parents — someone they can trust, who gives them the structure they need as they take the risks that growth and maturation require. That doesn’t mean dispensing with routine, structure, or the expectations of mutually respectful communication that keep a family functioning as a healthy unit — in fact, it contributes to all of these needs through healthy modeling of what listening, empathy, acceptance, and unconditional love look like.*

Children are individuals from birth, and they deserve for their individuality and what they understand about themselves to be respected. When they express to their parents what they recognize about themselves — even if it’s just “I like strawberry better than chocolate” (I know, I know — so hard to accept) — they are seeking affirmation. You say, “yes, and” and for their birthday, get them a strawberry instead of a chocolate cake. Why would you take a stand on forcing chocolate on them just because you think it’s better or more “normal”?

Children need this affirmation from the people they trust the most, or try to trust. When adults model this affirmation and show that they respect an individual’s feelings, they are giving their child guidance and offering them the kind of structure all children need.* Parents and caregivers are (or should be) the safe places for young people as they explore the world, ports in a storm as they try broccoli for the first time or take other risks. Children need to know that no matter what they see in themselves or how they feel, if they disclose it, they still will be loved unconditionally. “No, but” always carries conditions. “Yes, and” does not.

I am a science journalist and author of The Tailored Brain: From Ketamine, to Keto, to Companionship, A User’s Guide to Feeling Better and Thinking Smarter (“fantastic and timely,” Salon) and of Phallacy: Life Lessons from the Animal Penis (which Pulitzer winner Ed Yong calls “a hilarious tour through a menagerie of dicks, and a ferocious guide to not being a dick yourself”). Find me on Twitter @ejwillingham.

*Addenda.